Howl At The Moon - on Monday Night

The deal was supposed to be a Toy Drive. I was supposed to bring a draw- fans with me- to get toys donated. So, on a Monday night, the day before Christmas eve, my fans are supposed to go to Universal City Walk, pay 10-20 dollars for parking, bring a toy so they wouldn't have to pay a 15 dollar cover and buy a 10 dollar beer to watch me sing for a 30 minute set (which I was told when I signed on was going to be a 45 minute set.) Anyway, it was fun. My son went with me and did the video. We were looking for the place which was on the second level above the City Walk and he pulled it up on his phone to find it and the web site photo looked like it held three hundred people. I started to hyperventalate a bit. The bar could hold maybe a crowded 100 people. The act before me came to get my CD and said they loved me. T

This is a marvelous book!

Bird

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.

Pablo Neruda

Styron and the lost prize

So, with Christmas and with War and Peace over, I read Sophie's Choice in three weeks. I was Stingo, I had lived in a small apartment in New Orleans, exactly like the apartment described in the book- different city.. I had upstairs neighbors I was friends with. Sophie sat in my apartment and talked to me. The book is lovely, real and I couldn't put it down Styon is troubled always. I could not watch the movie for a good year and a half because that's not how Sophie looked. And the apartment wouldn't have looked like my apartment. The Confessions came shortly afterward. I can recall finishing the book at a little hotel on Geary Street where I moonlighted (actually daylighted- I was working graveyard full time at the St. Francis Hotel)) as a morning desk clerk and was brought to tears and got all choked up behind the desk in the empty lobby of this little hotel.

You should read all of Styron. I plan to. I think I have three left. There's still plenty of time

 The books let you know how troubled he was. The photo makes you realized what he overcame to live.

He shoulda won a Nobel. 

Been neglecting this blog again- sorry

Owe you guys Styron, but until then

Art is conversation. You can sit in your room and talk to yourself, but what's the point? Some people get paid for talking. Some even get prizes. If you don't start the conversation, who's gonna start it? I do it because I love to hear myself talk. But you have to listen too.

 

I wrote the above in response to a Facebook posting about art. I left out the part about how I started talking to prevent myself from being self-destructive and as a reaction to a crazy non-communicative father who abused all of those around him. Laughing is more fun than crying.